Monochromophobia
by ironoc
Summary: A person with monophobia is scared of being alone. A person with chromophobia is scared of colours. Monochrome is to consist of shades of only one colour. Dave Strider is all of these. Humanstuck. Predicted: 15-20 chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Your name is Dave Strider and you find yourself falling asleep in the lazy blaze of the early evening sunshine. You're aware that if it had been midday you would have burnt to a crisp by now, but that thought is swatted away like a mouse is pushed into its hole by a housewife. You kick your heels against the peeling paint of the wall, and feel it crumble like bread crumbs beneath the impact. You open your eyes for the sole purpose of watching the flakes meander to the ground several storeys below you. From this high up, the ground seems pinched, obscured by the grey angles of apartment buildings. The horizon's sketchy, wavering in the heat.

As if to assist your heels, you absently tap the rubber foot of the red and white cane on the wall. It gives a pleasant rhythmic thud, and you continue. This and the far off cawing of birds are the only sounds that reach your ears. It's so quiet otherwise that you can almost imagine that light glaring off the metal railings is singing. It catches the corner of your eye like a diamond ring would the eye of a crow.

You absently finger at the smooth surface of the bottom half of your iPhone's screen. It's something to touch, something to feel, and you're thankful of that because everything else is so numb and painless and it's nice to feel the pressure on the pad of your thumb, nice to feel the humid breeze on your face. You're trapped in time, preserved in amber, and for all you know you're suspended in this moment as if in air. There's no strings holding you up and no ropes tying you down.

You're free but you can't bring yourself to fly away.

You'd love to speak, but your throat feels sluggish and dry at once. It's paralysed by the gloopy resin that's dripping down from the back of your tongue. You settle for the words to be drawn across your shadowed irises.

_Wish you were here._

It's something you remember seeing on postcards, lined up on white wire racks outside souvenir shops. Fleeting memories of dreary seaside resorts dance through your mind and she's always there too. Smiling, laughing. Sometimes with chubby cheeks and clumsy digits, sometimes taller and slender and oddly graceful. Sometimes rounded, sometimes with sharp edges. Time-lapsed photographs, all with you and her but you can never make out your own face. It may be that you don't pay much attention to yourself, or that you paid a little too much attention to her.

She was the kind of friend that you grow up with and feel that you can let go at times. Sure, they had drifted apart; not because of fights, just because they wanted a change. She went with the angry short guy and the lanky nerd, you wandered off with John and Jade and Rose. But as if your pinkie fingers were tied together with a length of red cotton, you would always find your way back to each other. To you it's always been something inexplicable; you're cool, calm, a bit of a dick, and she was eccentric and quirky and overly friendly. Rose had always been baffled by your relationship, but your liability to take jabs at each other proved the strength of the bond.

_But it was at our closest that it all fell apart._

It was something you hadn't seen coming. In your defence, you're not psychic, and your eyes were closed. You remember a faithful Clementine sunset, a swap of sunny smiles. A whitewashed cliff and green iron park bench. Pinkish slabs of granite tell a story of a thousand footfalls below you, and untied shoelaces cast snakelike shadows on the pages. She had her pixiesque nose pointed towards her spagnola ice cream that was balanced quite precariously on a dripping wafer cone and kept sending fond glances towards the side of your head. There was a returned smile. There was the anxious cry of a gull above your heads.

There was a scream of tires, the whining of an out of control engine. Her eyes barely had the chance to widen before you were both flung head over heels from the ledge. Her mouth was open wide but no cry registered in your ears. Just the rushing of wind and air resistance and the sounds of crisped autumn leaves flashing past you.

Falling, _really _falling, is a beautiful thing. It's quiet, it's peaceful, and you come to accept the consequences before you land because of this. From the top of the cliff, the ground below had looked soft, consisting majorly of loosely growing patches of chive like grass and fresh flowerbeds, but suddenly now it seemed hard and cold and unforgiving and you dreaded the impact; but you also anticipated it. You can only spend so long suspended in air as you were.

Falling's like the moment before death. And, in a sense, it was.

For her.

The driver of the car was arrested for careless driving and manslaughter due to gross negligence. You remember feeling a forlorn smile creep onto your lips during the trial at how exciting she would have found it. But unfortunately she died on the evening of the 16th September. She didn't make it past A&E. You were patched up; they kept an eye on you for a few days, and so did Bro, and you suffered but it was more emotional than anything.

_It could have been me._

_No, it should have been me._

_She should be here._

_I should be dead._

Now you're alone with your memories and your scars. Since the incident you've found yourself with multiple ivory marks on your already pale skin-at first they were a plum colour, as if bruised, but gradually they faded- randomly occurring migraines and partial blindness in your left eye. None of this greatly affects you, but you know it might affect others. You spend your time not letting anyone notice, and not letting anyone ask about her. Sure, people noticed when she just stopped coming to school, and for months after the accident you were forced to live with mumblings and rumours following you through the corridors. You refused the friendship of John and Rose and Jade. All you really wanted was for her to be okay, for her to come back.

You don't ask for much. At least, you don't think so. But if there's one thing you want more than anything else it's for her to be alive again. You want to hear her manic laugh in science class, you want to be able to spot her in the mornings solely by her colourful clothes. You want her to appear by your side on the evening of September 16th one year, when you faithfully return with a fresh bunch of red tulips, dusted with the cinnamon colour of the fading sunlight, and tell you that it's all been some prank gone wrong or some elaborate dream. You want her to smile at you, you want to laugh at her and with her and oh god you just want her to come back and be okay more than anything in this godforsaken world.

Her grave is tear provokingly picturesque. It's situated on that same cliff, a metre or two from the edge. The headstone is a pale grey marble, and the engraving is gilded.

_Terezi Pyrope  
1995-2009  
The tears shed in your memory  
shall be scarlet_

That never really made much sense to you. She loved the colour red, she really did, but the image of scarlet tears was always a morbid one in your mind.

When the sun sets, as it had on the evening of the accident, strong and tangerine, the stone casts a beautiful long shadow across the top of the cliff. Just before the light fades, the top of the shadow touches the place where Terezi had sat on the bench. A golden plaque had been installed into the object, stating the date of her death and how she would be forever remembered. Knowing that none of the wardens would take the time to polish it, you take monthly outings to that spot to clean it. Other than that, and the yearly visit on the 16th September (which you try to work into the monthly visits anyway) you don't go there. You hole yourself up inside. Bro has most definitely noticed a change in your behaviour but he doesn't mention it. The last thing he wants to do is to make you cry because you're a Strider and that would be wrong.

_The only time a Strider can cry is when it's all over._

Sure, you've cried. You've cried bucketloads of tears since she died, mainly in the first fortnight. You didn't let anyone see, but you cried. Her parents took pity on how you were clearly trying your hardest to keep a straight face at the funeral. But even though it's been nearly three years, you'll still cry every now and again. You lock yourself away and curl up and cry. It feels natural, and it's like you're letting everything out. You're a bottle of Faygo- ironic shit that it is- all shaken up and ready to blow.

You look up. While you were caught in your reminiscing, the amber encasing you had melted away and the sun had set. The curtain call of katydids and locusts swathes the city and you close your eyes and listen to them. Goosebumps are standing upright on your forearms and you can feel them where the breeze laps at your neck. The time display on your iPhone's lock screen shows 00:12. Your shoulders droop and you take one last wistful glance at the stars, which are as ever battling their way through the smog. You appreciate their efforts and take a moment to admire the vague winking they give.

It is once again September 16th and you, Dave Strider, have a job to do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Hello readers! So far, this is all running smoothly, which is normal. It's usually around the fifth chapter that I give up, but fingers crossed that doesn't happen! This weekend I'm away, so I'll get through about three chapters then to post on Sunday/Monday. Again, thank you for the favourites and the reviews, and here is the second chapter!**

* * *

Whenever you arrive, it's almost like the cliff is beckoning you, welcoming you back. It's like it knows that while it's not your house, it's still your home. Home is where the heart is, they say, and your heart is three years lost beneath a twenty inches of compact soil. She took it when you fell. You appropriated her smile and her memory at the same instant. Just in case only one of you survived. Just in case.

The tops of the curling leaves are dipped in a waxy orange, and lazy shadows quiver on the grass, which is shiny and makes small ghostly twitching movements in the breeze. The bench is there. The cliff is there. The stone still stands like a soldier to attention pm the brink. There's a scattering of medium sized stones at the foot of it. Three of them, 2009, 10 and 11. They lie in a precise triangular formation and you're oddly reminded of eggs in a bird's nest. The small backpack hung lazily over your right shoulder contains another, for 2012, a sunny yellow polishing cloth you found in the bleach scented cupboard under the sink and a red crayon. The latter is here because of a conversation started by your bro as a feeble attempt to cheer you up, involving laying an art product on her grave with the flowers. You didn't take it as a joke. For four years you've been buying a twelve pack of Crayola wax crayons and throwing them all away but the red one.

You carry the flowers in your hand. It would be wrong to stuff them into the bag. They're red and the waviness of the petals almost makes them feel artificial, which they're not. They're not man made, they're just perfect. Now is one of the many times in your life that you chose for shades to be your coolkid trademark instead of rings or bowties. Or any other shit. Because neither of those things hide your eyes (unless you covered your eyes with them, which would be fucking stupid) and although there's clearly tears trailing below the rims, nobody can see the full extent of the pain in your eyes.

But since the incident, you haven't seen a single soul on this cliff. Maybe they don't want the same to happen to them, maybe they don't want to come across the quiet, mourning teenage boy with his knees in the mud and his heart at his feet, broken clearly in two. The bigger side has been nudged closer to the stone. It's not accepted.

You're not expected to get over her. Not by your friends, not by bro, not even in your own eyes. Even in your own eyes, you're breaking more and more with each visit.

You can feel them giving up on you. They're slipping, they're fading, they're going, they're going,

they're  
gone

Or maybe it's just you. That's something that's struck you as possible in the recent months. Maybe you're slipping. They're distorted, as if you're looking at them from beneath water. You're drowning and you can't breathe and John and bro and Rose and Jade are looking at you and staring and oh god they don't care do they and all you can do

all you can do

is scream and tell them that no, you don't want to sleep with the fishes you want to go up there, where Terezi is but the can't hear you or they don't listen or they just don't care.

And the thing that scares you is that you think you can see a hint of a smile hidden in John's overbite.

It scares you so much.

You let the grey rock-which is smooth and speckled and about as big as your loosely closed fist (and, from what you've heard, your heart, which is chokingly deep to you)- rest into the nest that the other three have created. It's like a pyramid now. Four stones, four fists, four hearts.

You cross your legs and fall back onto your rear in the grass. You can feel the dew soak up into the seat of your pants but that's the least of your worries right now. Walking home with a damp ass is not something you tend to get worked up about, especially not now. Even though in retrospect, you've had quite a good life, you feel like you've seen it all, felt all the pain, and that after all of that nothing can possibly bring you down further.

You feel wrongly.

Because it's the yearly visits to the gravesite that bring you down further. It's the twang in your chest when someone says her name. It's when the teacher stumbles on the register and subconsciously calls out her name. It's her not being there.

The sunlight is crisp and gives a nice, bold shadow. Of you, of the stone, of the bench. You prod yourself to remember to polish the plaque. When you prop yourself onto one knee, about to stand, you feel a hand on your shoulder. It's brief, cold, impossibly gently. You quickly whip around, eyes searching the vegetation for any signs of human life. You come to the conclusion that it was the wind and get back to your business of caring and noticing.

But there it is again. No shadow, no sound, no warmth. Annoyance boils like vomit in the back of your throat and you swallow thickly. You'll feel stupid if you sound any sort of greeting to whatever might be with you, so you keep your tongue firmly plastered to the roof of your mouth.

It doesn't come again. Not until you leave. You dust the plaque in silence, pausing to spit on the cloth a couple of times to give a bit of a personal shine. You can see your face in it by the time you're done, hollow shades blocking your eyes. You like that. Hollow. Hiding the fullness behind them.

Before you leave, you take one last glance around. The cliff top is immortalised in your memory, but you know that to the eyes of anyone else it's deteriorating. It was once a picturesque spot that boasted views over the city and the trees and the shiny beetles of cars that trundled across the tangled wool of the roads. But you can see rust cracking the surface of the beach and rot creeping into the trunks of trees. The grass is overgrown and woven with dandelions and stinging nettles. It tickles at your ankles, slithers up your legs.

You shudder when you see the sunset. Something seems different about it, something you can't quite pit your finger on. It's still a faithful, bold tangerine colour and it's still bathing the eroded tips of the hills in a sprinkling of warm light. They're like cupcakes dusted with sierra icing, laid out in uncontrolled random rows as far as you can see.

But there's something different about it. Definitely. You're not in the mood to be argued with. Even after three years, you feel your throat constricting and the corners of your mouth tugging themselves downward. You cast a glance to the stone, and it's like a spell, cutting your ties for the year.

Or not.

Even though you've laid the flowers, said your words ("hey, Tez. How're you doing down there? Things are shit without you. No change there. Not for three years." you could barely speak without choking on barely stifled sobs) and planted the pebble into its little nest, you can't help but feel that you're missing something.

Admittedly, you know you were missing something. But now it's like you're missing something else;

something besides her.

It's a kind of sick feeling, bubbling and boiling in the back of your throat- which is hoarse and parched with hot, unshed tears. You narrow your eyes into the waning sunlight and sit on the bench, waiting for the sensation to subside.

It doesn't.

Not until you find yourself sitting in the dark once again. It seems to be a common thing with you at the moment. Maybe it's because you're a night owl, which, while it would be new information to you, it wouldn't be surprising. You're forever falling asleep in classes, especially the ones you used to sit in with Terezi. Her bubbly, manic personality used to keep you entertained, whereas now the absence is making everything that much more numbingly boring.

As you stand up, gather your bag and stretch because sitting still for that long is just not something you do, the world seems colder. You're not sure if it's the night, or the wind, but it makes you shiver, once, but then you move on.

At the opening to the cliff top, there's a cluster of trees. You notice a figure standing, silhouetted, underneath one.

Your first notion is that it's bro, here with a lift home. Or to give you one of his characteristically useless telling-offs for being late.

But it's not.

That's fairly obvious.

It's a girl. Tall, lanky. Hair that reaches to just above her shoulders,

It's not bro, you think. It's definitely not bro.


	3. Chapter 3

**Just squeezing one last chapter in before I go. :3**

* * *

You're not sure what happens next. Your consciousness for the next few moments narrows and weakens because you're focusing all your energy on figuring out just what the hell is going on here. It's her, all right. She has her hand on her left hip and her expression is all lopsided, sharp-toothed grin.

She's smiling at you. She's laughing at your expression. She's not explaining, she's not consoling you. It's almost as if she's been here all along and she's jesting at the fact that you've only just noticed her. You've woken up and she's welcoming you back.

It's one of those moments where you can't decide whether to hug her or punch her. She just looks so fucking smug that you can't take it, you don't want to take that sort of shut from someone who left you alone to mourn for so long. It's her fault, you know, but for some reason you can't bring yourself to be angry at her.

You look at her. You suppress a snarl.

Then you really look.

And you nearly stumble off the cliff.

She's shimmering, like the scales of fish or pearlescent butterfly wings. Her fingers and the wispy ends of her glowing ember hair are static, buzzing in and out of view. Her eyes are the same, though. A pale blue, like the sky in winter. Her clothes are plain- a pair of jeans and a red t-shirt- but untarnished.

She laughs.

"Take a picture, it'll last longer."

You realise you were staring at her eyes with your jaw almost on your chest, lost in the soft blue. She's not here, you think, this isn't happening. You spend the next ninety three seconds gathering your emotions up and trying to convince yourself that you fell asleep on the bench.

But that didn't explain the hand on your shoulder, it didn't explain the sick feeling.

I haven't slept in two days. I could be hallucinating.

Her smile falters, then disappears. "Dave? Are you okay? I didn't mean to scare you. Dave. Dave, look at me."

You don't. You don't look at her. You look at your feet, at the grass, at the little collections of dirt created by earthworms, anything but her, her eyes. Because if you look at her too much, you might start getting your hopes up and you might start believing that she's actually there because she's so solid-save for the static in her fingers- and just so in front of you that it's really hard to ignore the fact that to you, at this moment in time, Terezi Pyrope seems pretty fucking alive.

But she's not. She's not alive. I saw her fall. She fell with me.

She fell down that cliff.

Slowly, she approaches you. You can't help but look up and notice that when she moves the shimmer becomes more noticeable. It's like she's a hologram, sometime in the future. And in your head, this is what it is. Someone has turned your dead best friend into a hologram just to fuck with your head.

This makes you angry.

You decide to show it.

It's very unlike you to get this worked up, but hey, when anyone's been messed with this much they tend to get a little pissed. You don't like this one bit; you find yourself looking into the trees on either side of you, into the shadows, checking if there was any Wizard of Oz shit going on back there.

There isn't anyone. Not as far as you can see.

"Te..." You stop yourself. There is no way that you are going to call this fake by the name of your friend. This is not Terezi.

It's not.

"What the fuck is this all about?" Despite your anger, you manage to keep your voice low. Nothing stirs at the sound, not even the small bird sorting through the leaves a couple of feet to your left. "Who's behind this?"

Terezi-fake's expression shifts from friendly to a heartbreaking mix of confused and hurt. You don't let it affect you, not on the outside. On the inside, though, the small part of you that still believes is screaming.

"What are you talking about?"

While her appearance is crackling and flawed, you can't help but notice how real and smooth her voice is.

"Nobody has to be behind this."

She seems to latch onto your thoughts. She knows what you're talking about and her expression simply becomes wounded. Her eyebrows are drawn together, her lips set into a thin, stubborn line.

"This is natural, Dave, can't you see?"

Can't you?

She's close enough, now, that you can hear her breathing. Which strikes you as odd, seeing as a hologram wouldn't need to breathe.

But a ghost wouldn't, either.

The sun's gone, now. All that you can see by is the faint glow she's giving off, and the faraway lights of the city behind you. It's creepy, and it sends shivers down your spine; you try to walk away, to run home, but to your- slight- dismay, you find your feet are rooted to the ground with a sticky concoction of curiosity, fear and mud.

"What are you?"

"Dead."

'Terezi' replies with a brief shrug of her shoulders. Her expression and general attitude is nonchalant, as if this whole thing is no big deal. _No, not life changing in the slightest, I just popped over from the great beyond to say hi_. She allowed herself a tiny smile as she imagined what her mortal friend would probably say in the future in regards to their meeting. "I'm dead."

"Yeah, and so how are you here?" You're trying so hard to keep the tremor out of your voice. This is a different type of fear. It's not a fear of ghosts, not of the dark, not of whatever might be lurking in the trees.

It's a fear of her leaving again. Ghost or hologram or memory she might be, but at least she's here, at least you're talking to her. She might not be alive, as she had clearly stated, but she's standing in front of you.

So she must be, a little bit.

You're slowly coming around to the fact that _yes_, this is a ghost. _Yes_, this person is dead and will never be alive again but _yes_, this person is a ghost.  
_  
__You took my heart._

"We're linked, Dave." She doesn't let you finish your question. You were intending to add a witty, funny quip at the end, the icing on the cake, but your mind is blank. You're not yourself right now.

_I appropriated your smile and your memory in return._

"I'm tied to you."

_That's why.__There's a little bit of you in me.__That's why you're here._


	4. Chapter 4

The next day proceeds without much of a disturbance, other than the fact you wake up to a pair of bright blue eyes staring into yours. Naturally, this provokes a reaction consisting of a violent string of profanity and you hitting your head on the headboard.

As you had unconsciously expected, bro happens to be walking by. He pretty much defines sod's law by strolling into the room with his eyebrows visible high above the top of his shades. You put your own on and sit up.

"What's going on in here?" he inquires. He looks around with a slight smirk pulling his lips in the direction of his sideburns. "Did you have a nightmare, you little pussy?"

You anxiously look to your right, hating the idea of having to explain the blue tinged projection standing by the bed, but she's not there.

She's not there.

Panic hits at your heart like a drum beat, and you look around again, but your nerves are simply making your eyes less and less accurate.

You give up.

_She's not here. _

"What're you looking for?" Bro's voice is annoyingly condescending. He seems to have forgotten that today is the day you do not want to be bothered. Every year, you get the 17th September off school, which gives you time to sulk and lounge and basically be a useless pile of shit.

Or, in this case, search frantically for an apparently absent ghost.

You stop when you see bro's face. He's shallowly confused, loitering in the doorway. You decide to play it cool.

"What is it, little boss?" he asks again.

You grimace. You hate it when he calls you that.

"Nothing."

"I smell bullshit."

"That's not good. Get an air freshener."

Your panic wanes as you feel a need for natural brotherly banter. You'll find Terezi later; assuming that she is still here.

Bro takes one last look around and, with a dissatisfied grunt, leaves the room. You exhale and peel back the covers.

"That was close!"

The voice comes from behind you, a little to your right.

You flip your shit.

Terezi's there again, her smile crackling across her blue tinged face like a hyena, half bent over with her hands on her thighs. Her pose, her expression, everything, is patronising and humiliating. She's laughing at you, and you're frozen in place splayed against the wall.

Fuck you. It doesn't exit your lips but it's something to be found in copious amounts in your eyes.

Terezi is oblivious to this, and she punches your shoulder. You shiver at the contact- it's static and cold, like a nylon jumper in the arctic.

You groan a little at how bad that comparison was.

"Sorry, Dave. That was funny."

"Sorry, Dave, that was funny." you mimic. It's sickeningly immature but at least it makes you feel a little better.

Terezi, apparently, finds this and your general mood even funnier, but painstakingly refrains from laughing at you again. Must have been something to do with the venomous scowl you aimed at her.

Breakfast consists of chocolate milk and waffles. ("Waffles? Seriously?" "Fuck you, man. Waffles are ironic shit." "They're shaped like teddy bears, Dave." "Okay, that wasn't my choice.") You sit at the table, using the prongs of your fork to push a carefully cut square of batter around until you're convinced it's completely coated in syrup. You do this slowly, not raising your eyes from the plate. Bro- who is clad in an ironically unmanly pink 'kiss the cook' apron- doesn't want to bother you any more, and the most contact he has with you is when he plates up another waffle for you.

For a semi-famous puppet pornogropher, he's an alright guy.

You retreat to your room afterwards. Shafts of golden sunlight are filtering through your window. You take a moment to wonder how it could reach you past all the buildings.

You close the curtains.

Terezi's perched on the bed, hands on her knees. You haven't had the chance to speak to her properly, seeing as last night you got home and collapsed into bed so bro wouldn't question.

"Ghosts aren't real."

Her expression doesn't falter. You'd expect her to look at least a little bit hurt. You don't mean to insult her but all you want is at least a tiny bit of a reaction. All there is a knowing smile and silence. You're on the verge of waving your hand in front of her face, make her blink.

All you want is for her to hurt with you.

You don't want smiles and giggling. You want her to cry, you want her to get mad at you, you want her to tell you how fucking stupid you're being.

You'd even be happy if she left you, right now.

Because it would mean less confusion.

"You're not fucking real."

"What would it take to get you to believe otherwise, Dave?"

You think for a moment. Despite the sincereness in Terezi's cyan eyes, your trust still lingers on a knife's edge, a hair's breadth. The smile's more translucent, as if you're looking at it through a dirty window.

You nod to the blank space of wall just behind Terezi.

"Walk through it." You're convinced that this is a good idea. "Walk through that wall."

Terezi shakes her head. "You could be a little more creative than that."

She complies anyway. But for the fear of bumping into bro on the other side, you tell her to stick her hand through the wall with the window.

When she does it, there's no creepy ghostly ecto shit. No fraying on the wall surrounding her arm. It goes clean through. No blood, no tears.

On a whim, you stick your head out of the window. Sure enough, she's stretching her fingers on the other side.

"I'd hate to say I told you so."

You cringe at her tone._ Okay, I lost. You were right._

But, you realise, the turn of your opinion wasn't all that bad. It would seem that you're not hurting as much anymore.

_She's here to stay._


	5. NOTE

Hello! Just here to say that I am so sorry (the kind of get-down-on-your-knees-and-grovel sorry) for the prolonged break from this fic. But fear no more; I will strive to complete it. The next chapter will hopefully be here soon! To the few people who hung on- thank you for your patience!


	6. NOTE: WHERE TO FIND THE REST OF THE FIC

Hello again. I'm sorry for the wait. This fic is being given a new lease of life here== /works/549841/chapters/979457

Thank you for your patience!


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